The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has introduced a new radio resource control (RRC) state: RRC Inactive state, for the next generation (e.g., 5G or new radio (NR)) wireless communication networks. RRC Inactive state aims to achieve power saving with acceptable access latency. When a user equipment (UE) is in RRC Inactive state, the next generation radio access network (e.g., 5G RAN) and the UE store the Access Stratum (AS) context (e.g., UE context) separately. In addition, while in RRC Inactive state, the UE does not have an RRC connection with the next generation radio access network (e.g., 5G RAN), although the next generation radio access network (e.g., 5G RAN) keeps a connection with the next generation core network (e.g., 5G CN) for the UE. Other characteristics of RRC Inactive state have been in development.
Thus, there is a need in the art for efficient packet delivery in RRC Inactive state to reduce signaling overhead, power consumption, and resource cost on both the UE side and the radio access network side.